I always feel as if I am standing outside of myself, and that I am an observer to my own activities. Impassive and sometimes amused. I wish there was something that could bind shut the emptiness blowing about this discreet distance I keep within myself. (1:23 PM) Right now I am at work, being productive, dashing off words into this document whenever there is a moment. My back is bitterly tense. A backrub or some kind of physical effort would help matters, but I promised myself I would not join a health club until 2 of my credit cards are paid off. They will be paid off very soon, and the fact is that their balance is not any kind of financial crisis for me.

Not at all sure what I want to say here. Wanna keep talking, though, have to maintain some kind of activity. My head and neck are feeling numb, and that feeling of being just slightly outside my body is very pronounced this afternoon, as it was this morning. Sometimes I wish I could really control the things I do, the places I walk. Well, I guess that what I really wish is that I was not so far from myself.

2:11 PM
I still need to set the clock on my computer, which says that it is now 3:11 PM. I wonder if I was being frivolous Saturday night/Sunday morning when I felt a moment of togetherness with all the members of the Windows95 community. At 2:00 AM my work was interrupted by a little dialog box informing me that the clock had been reset to reflect the new standard time or whatever time we're on now. Then it became 1 AM, and I still couldn't get to sleep, so I kept doing whatever I was doing and I kept eating ice cream. Together we were. *

I was telling my friend Dwayne about my near-encounter with the very beautiful woman at the museum on Friday. I was explaining to him that I automatically assume that women who I think I might like are too busy with other things to want to ever bother entertaining one of the few single guys in Manhattan. Dwayne was very funny about it, as he is about almost everything. He said "Well, Mark, you're talkin' to the right guy. My philosophy is, 'If there's any possibility, I mean any possibility whatsoever that something could go wrong, just forget it!' Do what I do. When I think I'm approaching a situation like the one you described, I don't fuss or muss about it for one minute. I just go home! Play video games! Watch the local access cable channels! That's my advice." *

One of my co-workers came in here a little while ago. When she realized that I was listening to a Christian radio station she laughed in my face. She looked at the radio with a look of idiot's outrage, then guffawed and said "Is that that Christian station?" I don't know how I reacted or if I indicated anything at all, but she next said "Oh, that's OK! I'm just surprised, that's all." I said "Thanks." . . . . . Welcome to the melting pot of my office. *

I was at the bookstore last week looking at scores of pinao music by Johannes Brahms. I've never been able to forget this story I heard about him, about why he chose never to get married or have any kind of home-life. I don't really know if the story is apocryphal or not, but it's very sad nonetheless. He said that he was a composer, and he could never face the indignity of coming home night after night to face his wife and explain that the day had seen another failure. That no one bought any of his music, that the only performances he could secure were by second and third-rate ensembles. He didn't think he could endure the face of a disappointed wife day after day.

I've often felt the same way. I know that I resist any kind of involvement with people under circumstances which reflect myself in anything other than a very positive and flattering way. I know it's selfish, and I know also that it is something I will overcome. But I know men in their 60s who have never married, and who grew up in a time when people did get married and when there were many available candidates. My thinking, however selfish and convoluted it may be, has always leaned toward thinking that I would not be happy with a woman who could tolerate all my shortcomings and inadequecies. I have to have none, or else I have to have only those faults of which I am already aware, and therefore I can deflect criticism or observations away by finishing whatever statement someone is trying to make about me.

I think it reflects less about my own standards about myself than about how pointlessly demanding I am of others. I am not demanding, though, as much as I am distant and afraid of people for fear of what things they might somehow do to me. Demands and ideas about other people become distorted and unfulfillable in the vacuum of life. *